Four cabinet ministers in two days- that must be getting close to a record:
The exchanges came on the eve of Thursday’s European Parliament and English local council elections, which are predicted to be a bloodbath for Labour – and barely an hour after Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears said she was quitting.
Blears said she was stepping down to return to “grassroots” politics but had been accused of “totally unacceptable behaviour” by Brown last month over her expense claims.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, left embarrassed after it emerged she claimed on expenses for two adult films watched by her husband, has confirmed she will step down at the next cabinet reshuffle, expected as early as Friday.
Children’s minister Beverley Hughes also said Tuesday she was going and will reportedly be joined by Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, a close Brown ally.
Labuor’s support in polls is apparently down to somewhere between 16 and 22%. Unless something changes – radically – in the next few months, they face electoral annihilation.
There are proximate causes of Brown and New Labour’s problems – the relatively ineffective response to the global financial crisis, the MP expenses scandal, the McBride Affair. But, personally, I wonder whether the lack of enthusiasm for defending New Labour is because because it managed to alienate much of the “progressive left” long ago – for want of a better term – ever since Tony Blair (with Gordon Brown’s concurrence) decided that joining the Iraq war was a good idea, not to mention the regular expressions of disdain towards civil libertarian issues like ID cards and detention without charge (which led to a defeat of the government in the House of Commons).
Triangulation strategies might work in the short term. But if a party constantly deserts its friends, they won’t be there when things get tough – something that Australian Labor might want to keep in mind.
UPDATE: Labour with a “u”. Happy now?
The government will bear the brunt of this, but Tories and Lib Dems are alsofalling like flies. Apparently the polls suggest the electorate is turning on all incumbents – rather than just Labour per se. Being a sitting member next election will be a challenge. It bears all the hallmarks of a legitimation crisis.
Lefty E
I think you are right there, much more a “pox on both your houses” than anything else. Still Lab will be thrashed, it remains to see wether its into 3rd place rather than 2nd though. A stint at 3rd might see them re-invent themselves, or do a democrats…
Neither of the 2 major parties offers alternatives 2 a number of the hot button issues like immigration, EU membership, and civil liberties. One can only hope the odious BNP doesnt capitalise on those issues.
Id thouroughly reccommend 2 blogs if you havent allready read them
Order, order: (this bloke had a big hand in uncovering the expenses scandals) http://order-order.com/
And for fun (and swearing) The devils kitchen: http://devilskitchen.me.uk/
One wonders how the Liberal Democrats will do when the election is held. There might even be a chance of a hung parliament.
If so, and the Lib Dems offer to support whichever party promises to implement proportional representation, it’ll change the shape of British politics permanently.
Robert,
When the deluge arrives there won’t be room for the Tory members on one side of the chamber. You know what “first past the post” does to a party with 22% support.
The “progressive left” might amount to 3-6% (say) of the voting public. A couple of years ago Labor was on 45%, Tories languishing. Mr Blair & Mr Brown have managed to halve their party support. Quite an achievement!
How did B1 and B2 do it? My guesses: scandals, dour leader, failure to improve NHS and schools, inefficiency, tiredness, peerages for the boys, scandals, unattractive leader, dithering, Iraq,…. but most of all the contrast between B2 an
*Obama*
and
*fresh, young, new, non-fuddy-duddy, articulate Conservative Leader; apparently not into kinky sex*
But I’m only guessing.
BTW: electing a “progressive left” leader to replace B2 now, would see Labor support plummet to approx. 10% I reckon.
Yep, I take your point.
But the effect of alienating core supporters is even stronger in a voluntary voting system than in Australia, because not only will they not vote for you, they won’t help to get other people to the polls.
Furthermore, people who might otherwise go out to bat for the government won’t do so, because they were alienated years ago.
I remember that a large part of the reason the Tories lost last time was because a few of them trod on their dicks in much the same way as Labour has just managed. (I can’t remember if it was financial or sexual sleaze – perhaps both.)
The more things change …
It really is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
I am not suprised at Brown’s obstinancy – hope is a universal humnan trait. I don’t understand what he expects to gain by not going to polls now.
The problems with the system of allowances is directly related to the fact that they don’t pay their politicians enough.
It would be interesting to know if any Australian parliamentarian has been privy to any information or background to the fantastic workings of the Westminister perks while a guest of the now disgraced and resigned House of Commons Speaker.
I’m thinking of all those Inter Parliamentary Union junkets that are all the go in Commonwealth countries and I’m guessing that the daily hum-drum of the speaker’s job would come up with some of the more inquisitive along the manner:
Aussi MP: “So how do members handle their on-the-job expenses. Must be a tall order with 600 submitting their chits to your office Mr Speaker…weekly, monthly or end of the current sitting?
Speaker: “Oh no dear me old boy, we trust each other to do the right thing. No other way believe me.
Sadly so many did.
This weekend will be well worth watching after Friday (UK Time) local election results.
A missed opportunity for Brown. In his position I would have busted out the hammer and dropped anyone with the faintest whiff of shonk. Then I would have had an aggressive say on pre-selections. And then I would call an election.
I would apologise quite a bit too.
In fact, I would be pulling whole chapters out of the the Peter Beattie Bible.
Yes Robert, quite right: there is the extra factor of voluntary voting.
But do we have evidence that “left progressives” are generally more active in “getting the vote out” than conservative unionists (for example) or moderates?
I think the UK may just be sick of Labor. Have the voters “stopped listening to” B2 as was claimed about PM Howard?
Jacques,
I doubt Brown will be calling an election any time short of the the last possible legal date. If he goes any time soon then the majority of existing Labour members will lose their seats. If he holds on into 2010 there is a prospect that the economy may have turned around and the result may improve from complete annhiliation to merely a massacre.
If he goes now then it really will be a turkey voting for Christmas.
Put 3 June 2010 in your calendars – unless there is something really odd happening.
I remember that a large part of the reason the Tories lost last time was because a few of them trod on their dicks in much the same way as Labour has just managed. (I can’t remember if it was financial or sexual sleaze – perhaps both.)
Robert, it’s UK Labour. Thankfully they don’t adhere to the eccentric spelling convention that their Australian counterparts have adopted.
And that’s been my pedantic moment for the day.
On the other hand, how many Labour MPs were caught tickling the till for funds to clean out their moats?
Labour may be dead, but the Tories also have a lot of ’splaining to do.
The scary possibility is an accelerated rise of the BNP.
I am literally weeping with joy, Robert!
Katz
Now come on, those decaying pesants most dredge themselves….
There has also been quite a bit of “flipping” going on as well, buying a property, renovating at the taxpayers expense, then selling before repeating the game again.
The duck island was another tory scalp, one chap claimed thousands for a man made “duck island” for his pond.
Both sides have been trufflehunting with expenses, the real scandal should be the lack of investigative reporting on this issue by the press in the UK. Makes me wonder what bodies our own press gallery leaves unmentioned for fear of losing that steady stream of pre-manufactured stories that passes for political journalism in Australia?
c’mon Moley, we had that Tassie MP a few years rumbled for staying at his Mum’s place: a scalp attributed to Mr Co$tello, and nearly a real, dead set scalp. Luckily, he lives. He thrives.
Ambigulous
I must have blinked and missed that one…
Bah stuffed up my moat, it was meant to be “those pesants wont dredge themselves” Bah, passionfingers today…
My serious point was how could that corruption on that scale, over all parties (I think the libdems had 2 caught), have flourished if the reporters had been doing their jobs?
Beattie was a master at ir but of all people it was Joe BP who summed up what he did with reporters best “feeding the chooks”.
“Spin” is giving the “respectable” reporters a story every day or 2 so they dont do any real investigative work….
42 days detention without trial was defeated in the Lords (=Senate, but not elected) not the commons (=House of Reps).
The progressive left is certainly alienated by Labour, in addition to a ‘plague on both of your houses’ across the country. We’re expecting a big Green vote in Hackney (epicentre of the progressive left) today!
And how does it feel, Pippa? Will Hackney rejoice? Are the Greens ready to join a coalitin Govt, or will he Tory Deluge swamp all other parties? (Not today, but at the General Election.)
The elephant in the room is the surreally bad state of the British economy. Nulabour have literally bankrupted the country, ruined its industrial sector and squandered all available resources. We may well be seeing the very first failure of a welfare state. Soon we might just be seeing what really happens to a welfare state which can no longer afford to pay welfare.
It may be interesting, but it will not be pretty.
IT
Is ‘Nulabour’ like ‘Nullarbor’, or more like IngSoc?
If you want to look for comparisons between what has already happened in the UK, and where you are going in Oz, this article gives some very useful information.
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/4/28/4166589.html
Libertarian Party UK.
From wikipedia:
“The monarch holds a weekly audience with the Prime Minister. The monarch may express his or her views, but, as a constitutional ruler, must ultimately accept the decisions of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (providing they command the support of the House). In Bagehot’s words: ‘the Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy … three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn’.”
Maybe, after a little “consulting” chat, QE2 should be “encouraging” the PM to stand down and go to the people and “warning” him that he seems to have lost the confidence of said people (if not yet the Parliament). Of course Brown could and probably would just tell her to butt out as she is only the Queen and, if she’s not careful, a quick history lesson about Charles 1 might be in order! LOL.
Robert Merkel says:
Swing the BLP to the Left-liberal, great idea, that is if you want to guarantee the BNP gets EU parliamentary funding. Although it already looks like getting this in any case.
Its simply astounding that the MSM has not picked up on the EU’s massive sea-change in ideological opinion and psephological alignment. I put it down to straight out bias. Not a good look amongst supposedly scientific analysts.
Post-seventies Left-liberalism as an “ideological research program” is clearly exhausted. It pains me to see a commentator as savvy as Robert Merkel trot out these stale and discredited ideas, more out of reflexive ideological orthodoxy than any considered analysis.
“Disdain for civil libertarian” issues resonates amongst the EU populus these days. No one wants unidentified people just wandering around without any proper authority. Particularly after 7/07 proved that multiculturalism allowed home-grown terrorism to fester.
The BLP’s stance on Iraq war was not particularly harmful to the its public appeal. Schroeder, on the Left, opposed the Iraq war and has disappeared. Berlusculoni, on the Right, supported the war and he’s back in office. Something far deeper is at work in EU politics.
SInce the mid-noughties I have been pointing out that its not just the BLP but also the main parties of the European Left that have been in death spiral crises. Increasing to terminal velocity since 2005. Quoted from the Trumpet:
And now the Right, especially the Far-Right, looks like cleaning up big time in the EU elections. This in the middle of a massive recession which is clearly grounded in failure of finance capitalism. With plenty of long-term Right-wing incumbents ripe for falling. The Times reports:
To add insult to injury it looks like Spain and Portugal, last bastions of the EU Left in government, are also swinging to starboard. And a Right-winger is also likely to hold the EU presidency.
The ever-parochial and provincial AUS Left has been in a triumphalist mood over the past year or so, ever since nominally Left-wing parties won unlosable elections in AUS and the USA. Which feels good but just sets them up for base-betrayal by opportunistic politicians.
But it needs to look at the Bigger Picture, especially in the EU which is notionally the social-democractic super-power. The EU is shifting to the a Right-statist* position on civics, following its more Left-statist* position on economics. Left-liberalism in civics and Right-liberalism on economics are out of favour.
Its time Left-liberals started to get real about the EU. Or are they condemned to “rinse-lather-repeat” cycle of History from now until Hell freezes over?
* I suggest the term “corporalism” is better than “statism” to convey institutional authoritarianism.
Lets hope David Cameron is as green as he appears to be. Rudd certainly wasn’t.
Of course FPTP exaggerates things, but Britain’s single member electorate system will keep Labour viable for the future once the tsunami hits. They shouldn’t do any worse than Labour ‘83 or the Tories ‘97—dreadful, but not terminal for the party organisation.
That would be something. “The British don’t like coalitions” is the old saw.
Would Cameron want to risk introducing PR and creating a Liberal-Labour party? I think that would suck for him worse than it would for the older working class Left, as many in his own party would demand that they cease sharing any ‘middle class progressive’ territory with such a unified Opposition. But I’m getting ahead of myself several years…
That’s too farfetched. The UK isn’t Iceland. Sarkozy and Merkel would bail out Whitehall if things got that extreme (and they won’t). The EU is very much a we-must-all-hang-together-or-else-we’ll-hang-separately type of enterprise in that respect.
And why shouldn’t they be?
Agreed Nickws, electoral defeat is not death.
I still fondly recall “The Bulletin” newsagent poster – I think it was after the 1977 Aussie general election and ALP defeat: “Is Labor Finished?”
erm, no.
Mind you, electoral defeat in the UK is pretty miserable. The Lords isn’t nearly as powerful as the Auistralian Senate, the regional assemblies are new, weak, and there isn’t one for England, and the odds are they’ll be out of power for a decade.
Nick, given that GDP growth will fall by significantly more in 2009 in Germany than in the UK, and like most other European countries faces fiscal issues of its own, I can’t imagine that they will be in a position to transfer significant resources the UK’s way. An exchange rate/balance of payments/debt crisis in the UK would almost certainly involve the IMF, who would in turn attach conditions to the funding including scaling back government spending and raising taxes. Note that in the unlikely event that the UK did go cap and hand to the IMF, it wouldn’t be the first time they have done that in the welfare state era.
On the more substantive point, as dire as things are economically in the UK, the scale of the problems is considerably smaller than in Iceland, where bank assets and liabilities were multiples of GDP higher than in the UK, and the ability to raise sufficient revenue to cover those liabilities through tax is more limited. The UK has significant imbalances, which will require a long period of adjustment and eventually austerity, but they are not in the process of going bankrupt, as long as they develop a credible medium-term plan for returning public finances to health. Remember also that the UK is benefiting from a depreciation of the exchange rate, and public borrowing is in its own currency.
As for the politial fall out. Brown is the victim of his own rhetoric. In the years before the crisis he lectured the Europeans and anyone else that would lesson on the benefits of his light touch regulatory regime and how the stability of the economy was almost entirely due to his decision to make the BoE independent and his fiscal strategy. The financial crisis and the awareness that he was asleep at the wheel while enormous imbalances built up has removed any authority he once had. Even a recovery won’t help much because, unlike in Australia, the electorate partly blame Brown and Labour for the crisis in the first place. Only a series of Tory scandals can save Labour now, and even then it isn’t clear that Brown will survive long enough to reap any benefits from that.
Yes, Denis Healey went to the IMF as chancellor, and was shouted down at the next Labour conference after he spoke in favour of GB living within its means—and then came Thatcher.
But I think the poster at 23 probably thinks the entirety of Europe is the sick man of… Europe. My speculation about the German and French response to a fantasy UK bankruptcy stands. It’s just they’d wouldn’t be footing the bill, just guaranteeing the poms at the IMF, urging special terms, etc.
Another Minister resigns – another carriage derails and continues the slow death roll.
Well Robert,
being out of power for a decade in a democracy is just a Party’s democratic “just desserts”. You have to rebuild from the horrid misery, try to face your mistakes, work out a new plan. It’s not rocket surgery.
GregM #14:
It would have been sexual sleaze. It always is with the Tories. that’s what makes them so endearing. Labour tends to do financial sleaze.
It was, as I recall. What really hurt them was arguably not so much the sleaze itself, but that it all came out just when John Major was attempting to ply a “back to basics” family values agenda to shore up Tory support. They breached an implicit social contract between politicians and voters, the terms of which are “We won’t worry about what you do in your bedroom as long as you don’t worry about what we do in ours.”
Ambigulous,
How does the Labour meltdown feel? I guess pretty mixed feelings … the last thing I want is a Tory government, but of course I’ll be delighted for Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert to hold their seats and the prospect of new Green MEPs is great! I think a lot of people in Hackney feel similarly – they’ll be glad if Jean holds her seat but worried about a Tory government in the next 12 months of so.
We don’t currently have any MPs in Westminster and if we win our first seat/s at the next general it will be a small number and I doubt we would go into any sort of coalition. I think by far the most likely scenario is a Tory majority government.
NuLab (as they are called here in the UK) are done for, but I don’t think it’s because they alienated their mates on the left. It’s because Britain is fundamentally a racist, right-wing country, and NuLab is being swamped under a tide of racism, anti-Europeanism, and “little Englanders”. They have fixed the NHS (contrary to previous comments) but they have made the ultimate mistake – they let foreign workers in, and the British will only tolerate that so long as the foreign workers keep their heads down and do the shit jobs. Now that white Brits want the shit jobs because NuLab fucked the economy, the resentment is palpable.
I think Britain is fundamentally a Tory country. They let Labour in to fix the NHS. That’s done, so out they go. But Labour started a war on Islam, and started blowing their racist dog whistle, and they’ve given the BNP and UKIP a platform to broadcast their racist views, as well as giving them an air of respectability (“British jobs for British workers” is a Labour slogan, ffs). So when Labour slithers into electoral obscurity, they will let the far right in, and make the Tories that little bit more likely to dance to the BNP tune.
I’ve been in England for a year. I’ve seen more crime, more degeneracy, more filth and slime in that one year than in my entire life to date. This country is completely and utterly fucked up, in a way I couldn’t have imagined before I came here. Labour isn’t like the ALP at all, and I will thank my lucky stars that I have had a chance to see what a left wing party looks like after it has sold its soul to satan. The ALP stands for something, it has a history with the unions and a proud tradition. The BLP stands for fuck you and I’ve got my hand in the till. Good riddance to them, and thank the spaghetti monster I can get out of this place…
sg@38: your generalisations about “Britain” being right-wing and racist may be correct for the south-east half of England, but don’t apply elsewhere in the island. If we’re going to apply terms that sweepingly, then Wales and northwest England are left-wing and racist, while Scotland is left-wing and somewhat more cosmopolitan and Europhile. No references handy, but voting patterns are easy to look up, and position on the racism/parochiality/ethnic nationalist axis is based on three decades of continuous personal experience (although you could probably find surveys that support it).
The huge left-right divide between the populous and rich bottom-right half and the rest is the major driving force for Welsh and Scottish devolution.
Re. reasons for the demise of NuLab: you missed out the security cameras every metre and increasingly brutal policing. Brits, whether slimy and degenerate or not, do not really like being Big Brothered, and probably have become worried enough that they’d like the slide into Stasiland reversed. They won’t be vocal about it while it only seems to be having adverse consequences for The Other, but the nasty side effects are getting closer to home every day.
The Tories won’t help on this front, of course: the slide was started by Thatcher and accelerated by NuLab, which should really have been called “NewThatch”. What the rest of the country bar S.E. England would like is a real Labour Party, but that won’t be available until after the Tories get in and terrorise everyone, while NuLab implodes and is replaced by a new generation of noncriminal nontotalitarians. I’d give it until 2020 or so, if the country hasn’t disintegrated into warring statelets by then.
PS: most ironically accurate election poster ever: the Tories’ 1997 campaign poster featuring a shadowy Tony Blair with demonic red eyes, and the slogan “New Labour: New Danger”.
The BNP have won a seat in Yorkshire and the Humber – some ex(?)-Nazi called Andrew Brons. As I write they’re on a knife-edge in the Northwest, where the party leader may get in as well. That means the UK is sending at least 1 fascist to Europe. The second biggest bloc of votes seems to be going to UKIP, which I think represents a sea change in British politics which none of the major parties were ready for – a new, right-wing and racist party.
andyc, were you saying left-wing and racist? The conservatives are now ahead of Labour in Wales for the first time in history, and the two main parties in the UK are right-wing.
I went to Salisbury with an Asian-Australian friend 2 weeks ago, and as we emerged from teh station we saw a massive billboard with UKIP electioneering on it. The main slogan: “Say NO to ALL immigration NOW”.
British racist parties don’t fuck around…
sg@40: my ‘right’ and ‘left’ were averages over the last few decades, not based on a single election. In an optional-voting FFTP voting system, people who bother to place a vote are terrified of ‘wasting’ it by voting for a perceived no-hoper. So the majority of folks who are fed up with Labour will always vote Tory, and vice versa. That’s happened, and a ‘biggest swing to the right in a century’ in somewhere like Wales doesn’t surprise me after the way the current mob of goons in Westminster has been stuffing things up.
Because of FFTP, two-partyism is much more entrenched in the UK than it is in Oz, which makes the performance of UKIP and the Nazis even more remarkable and disturbing than it appears at first sight. This is a big popular swing in the direction of white Anglo racism and protectionist nationalism.
I am very worried about the way British society has evolved under governments from Thatcher onwards. Don’t think I’ll be moving back, any time soon.
sg@40: my ‘right’ and ‘left’ were averages over the last few decades, not based on a single election. In an optional-voting FFTP voting system, people who bother to place a vote are terrified of ‘wasting’ it by voting for a perceived no-hoper. So the majority of folks who are fed up with Labour will always vote Tory, and vice versa. That’s happened, and a ‘biggest swing to the right in a century’ in somewhere like Wales doesn’t surprise me after the way the current mob of goons in Westminster has been stuffing things up.
Because of FFTP, two-partyism is much more entrenched in the UK than it is in Oz, which makes the performance of UKIP and the Nazis even more remarkable and disturbing than it appears at first sight. This is a big popular swing in the direction of white Anglo racism and protectionist nationalism.
I am very worried about the way British society has evolved under governments from Thatcher onwards. Don’t think I’ll be moving back, any time soon.
Oops – apologies for the double post: wondering if my mouse is playing up.
Slight correction/addition to previous post. The Euro elections are not FFTP but multi-member proportional, which is why high votes for the Nazis are being reflected in actual seats. I think council elections may be similar. But General Elections remain FFTP, and that’s what Brits are used to, which is likely to have a major influence on voting tactics even under other systems.
You gotta give it to em, the Poms are cunning bastards though. They keep first past the post for the UK parliament – which creates majorities – and give the Welsh and Scottish assemblies a proportional system, which means nationalists cant win without allies in a coalition. Which like, will never happenzzzzz.